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UCA and UNRIC in partnership for UN Peacekeepers Day

UNRIC has this year started a partnership with the University for the Creative Arts, a specialist art and design institution offering a range of creative arts courses across five campuses in the South East of England, with the aim of enhancing the visibility of UN observances visibility drawing on the creativity of young talented students specialized in using graphic and visual tools.

The UN Peacekeepers Day that is celebrated every year today, 29 May, was chosen as the pilot project, on account of peacekeeping being one of the UN flagship activities, for which the Organization is universally known given its deployment of approximately 120 thousand peacekeepers in sixteen missions throughout the world.

The works we are posting are meant to focus on a range of specific aspects of the UN Peacekeeping, spanning from historical portraits of operations that have already been wrapped up to a more dynamic approach, relating to ongoing operations in the field. The statistical data and figures featuring in the infographics therefore reflect the varying reality of the current UN Peacekeeping, which is constantly evolving in its engagement vis-à-vis regions of deployment, support by troop and police-contributing countries, partnership with other actors, such as international regional organizations, governments, NGOs, civil society in general.

Based in Farnham, the Graphic Communication course is committed to creative thinking and technical excellence as the foundation of its practice, encouraging its students to investigate the context that surrounds us and invariably informs our practice helping produce work that communicates meaning.

As Ms. Maria Da Gandra, responsible for liaising with UNRIC on behalf of the course, explains: "Over the last few years Graphic Communication has developed strong international academic and industrial links, which offer the opportunity for collaborative projects and new ways of working." The collaborative relationships with the United Nations Regional Information Centre is one of those established by Farnham Graphics during the year. It saw a number of second-year students working to produce information design pieces to help communicate specific messages about the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. This was a perfect opportunity for our students to investigate and test the graphic communication subject area with critical and social issues of global reach.

"Cooperating with the United Nations for the International Day of UN Peacekeepers has been an honor to us. We strongly believe in the potential of further growth that may arise from a more articulated and profound cooperation with UNRIC. We are looking into including future projects into our academic programme and look forward to the next steps", she concluded.

When the Security Council approaches the final stage of negotiation of a draft resolution the text is printed in blue... What's in Blue helps interested UN readers keep up with what might soon be "in blue".

The Brussels based United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe - UNRIC provides information on UN activities to the countries of the region. It also provides liaison with institutions of the European Union in the field of information. Its outreach activities extend to all segments of society and joint campaigns, projects and events are organized with partners including the EU, governments, the media, NGOs, schools and local authorities.